Electromagnetically Transmissive and Thermally Opaque Engineered Microwave Interconnect
Abstract
In a standard two-conductor microwave transmission line, both the signal trace and the wide ground plane act as parasitic heat leakage paths along the propagation direction. To prevent this heat leakage, we devised a single-conductor microwave interconnect: the ground plane is removed entirely and the remaining signal trace is periodically fragmented into physically isolated metallic islands. We show that despite the galvanic isolation between adjacent metal islands, a surface confined mode of specific symmetry, the odd-symmetric spoof surface plasmon polariton, propagates through this periodic, single-conductor medium. This odd symmetry imposes an electromagnetic field null at the waveguide centerline, allowing complete removal of the metal at periodic intervals along the single-conductor waveguide without impacting EM propagation. Measurements on fabricated prototypes confirm the transmission response despite the physical fragmentation of the conductor, with de-embedded propagation loss of ~0.0031 dB/mm across a 5-6.5 GHz passband. Time-domain characterization verifies 1 Gbps amplitude-modulated data transmission with less than 145 ps group delay variation. Coupled electro-thermal simulation yields an effective thermal conductivity of 0.336 W/m*K, a 40x reduction relative to a continuous microstrip line of identical footprint.
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BibTeX
@misc{islam2026electromagnetically,
title = {{Electromagnetically Transmissive and Thermally Opaque Engineered Microwave Interconnect}},
author = {Md. Jawad Ul Islam and Ishrat Jahan and Abdelrahman Omar and Md. Omar Faruk Noman and Md Zunaid Baten and Soumitra R. Joy},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.09359},
eprint = {2610.09359},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09359},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electromagnetically Transmissive and Thermally Opaque Engineered Microwave Interconnect
AU - Md. Jawad Ul Islam
AU - Ishrat Jahan
AU - Abdelrahman Omar
AU - Md. Omar Faruk Noman
AU - Md Zunaid Baten
AU - Soumitra R. Joy
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.09359
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09359
AB - In a standard two-conductor microwave transmission line, both the signal trace and the wide ground plane act as parasitic heat leakage paths along the propagation direction. To prevent this heat leakage, we devised a single-conductor microwave interconnect: the ground plane is removed entirely and the remaining signal trace is periodically fragmented into physically isolated metallic islands. We show that despite the galvanic isolation between adjacent metal islands, a surface confined mode of specific symmetry, the odd-symmetric spoof surface plasmon polariton, propagates through this periodic, single-conductor medium. This odd symmetry imposes an electromagnetic field null at the waveguide centerline, allowing complete removal of the metal at periodic intervals along the single-conductor waveguide without impacting EM propagation. Measurements on fabricated prototypes confirm the transmission response despite the physical fragmentation of the conductor, with de-embedded propagation loss of ~0.0031 dB/mm across a 5-6.5 GHz passband. Time-domain characterization verifies 1 Gbps amplitude-modulated data transmission with less than 145 ps group delay variation. Coupled electro-thermal simulation yields an effective thermal conductivity of 0.336 W/m*K, a 40x reduction relative to a continuous microstrip line of identical footprint.
ER -